San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
So many angles to assess with Correa’s job search
Carlos Correa isn't alone. Baseball also flunked its physical.
The game is ill and getting iller. The Correa Caper is merely a symptom. The San Francisco Giants have a problem, sure, but MLB has a bigger illness. Let's discuss.
• Giants fans and Bay Area sports media members won the Knee-jerk Rage Award for 2022, for response to the news that the Giants had nixed the Correa deal. If you were in that angry mob, you know now how horribly you overreacted, but don't beat yourself up too badly, because the Giants kind of set you up.
• Did the Giants give Herschel Walker a physical before the team's principal owner invested heavily in Walker's U.S. Senate campaign? There was a widespread belief that the Giants backed out on the Correa deal because they couldn't bear to spend that huge amount of money. Meanwhile, Charles Johnson, the Giants' majority owner, has been spending freely to support election deniers and conspiracy theorists.
• So it's not crazy to make the connection: The Giants' owner can lavish money on people who believe in nefarious space lasers, but cheap out on buying a real shortstop.
• That could be a new term for someone with a great arm, like Correa. “Man, he's got a space laser.”
• You knee-jerkers were right about one thing: The Giants' deafening silence was foolish and infuriating. They couldn't comment on anything medical, but there was a desperate need for Farhan Zaidi, the voice of the front office, to say something. Hiding out is never the right strategy, unless you've just robbed a bank.
• What Zaidi could have said the day the deal fell through: Exactly what he said Friday about the Correa snafu, during the Zoom news conference for the Taylor Rogers signing.
• You knee-jerkers should, however, feel sheepish if you instantly sided with Scott Boras, Correa's agent. Two reasons you should have figured that his story was at least shaded: One, he's an agent. Two, he's Scott Boras.
• Boras relayed a heartwarming anecdote: He said that when the Giants rejected Correa and Boras immediately got him a deal with the Mets, Correa was so thrilled that he tackled his agent onto the bed in Boras' room at the St. Regis. So, Correa must have said something like: Scott, you are a freaking genius! The Giants’ deal falls through, but without shopping me around, you agree to a deal that will pay me $35 million LESS, plus I don’t get to play shortstop anymore? I love you, man!
• I'm not sure Boras is even a doctor, so we should not have nodded our heads when he mocked the Giants for their silly concern over Correa's leg. What does he know? If Boras is a real physician, he's the kind of doctor who tells you, “You're fat,” and when you say, “I want a second opinion,” he says, “OK, you're ugly, too.”
• Headline in Twins' fan website Twins Daily: “Projecting the Next Organization to Sign and Back Away From Carlos Correa.”
• By the way, what is the purpose of a pre-signing physical?
• The Correa Caper threw a harsh spotlight on baseball's major illness: Our national pastime is the only sport in America that has allowed itself to become a pure oligarchy, ruled by a privileged few.
• In what other sport would the top-spending team have a payroll six or seven times larger than the bottom spending team? MLB will set a record this season for the greatest distance between the spendthrifts and the cheapskates — specifically, the Mets and the Oakland A's. Joe Lacob outspends every other NBA team owner, but not by a 7-to-1 margin.
• The NFL used to be unbalanced. San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo built a dynasty partly on the strength of his willingness to outspend other team owners. He loved winning more than he loved money. That was great for 49ers fans, bad for football.
• MLB players don't want a salary cap, and you can't blame them. But there has to be a way to balance the system, so that the main factor in winning games isn't the team owner's willingness to spend.
• Mets owner Steve Cohen isn't the problem. He didn't invent the system, he's simply so in love with winning that he's willing to exploit the very exploitable system with his lavish spending. A's owner John Fisher's ownership is a blight on baseball, but baseball enables Fisher by having such a stupid system.
• Analytics is also a problem, mostly for teams like the Giants. The Giants decided a few years ago to save money by outsmarting, out-analyticsing, their rivals. So they hired an analytics-savvy leader, Zaidi. They would win without big-ticket players. That didn't work. Steve Cohen hires number-crunchers, too.
• “It certainly was a rollercoaster ride for the Correa family,” Boras said a week ago, yanking the big lever that sends the little cars click-clickclimbing up the steep track.